In our present few terms have become more central to urban planning, environmental management, policy, and business management then “resilience.” This talk will trace a history of resilience in ecology, cybernetics, and economics to ask how models of nature as constantly volatile and crisis ridden are shaping technology, habitat, and life in our present and future.

Orit Halpern is Full Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures at Technische Universität Dresden. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University.

She has held numerous visiting scholar positions including at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, IKKM Weimar, and at Duke University. She is currently working on two projects. The first is a history of intelligence and evolution; the second project examines extreme infrastructures and the history of experimentation at planetary scales in design, science, and engineering.

She has also published widely in many venues including Critical Inquiry, Grey Room, Journal of Visual Culture, and E-Flux. Her first book Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason (Duke UP 2015) investigates histories of big data, design, and governmentality. Her current book with Robert Mitchell (MIT Press 2023) is titled The Smartness Mandate. She is also one of the Primary Investigators of the Governing through Design Research Group and a P.I. on the AUDACE FQRSC project Reclaiming the Planet, both which sponsor this project.